Recession impacting local nonprofits’ building plans

Editor’s note: This week the Business Journal looks at how the building projects of two San Antonio nonprofits were impacted by the recession. In both cases, the resulting projects mean San Antonio will better serve some of its citizens who need assistance, and their quality of life will be improved — despite the recession.

Wesley Center

By Carol Schliesinger

A century ago, three Methodist missions joined together and opened the Wesley Community Home on the city’s South Side, providing a soup kitchen, clothing and sewing classes out of a two-story house. Today, the center is known as the Wesley Health & Wellness Center and operates under the auspices of Methodist Healthcare Ministries. Located at the intersection of Southcross and Fitch streets in the heart of San Antonio’s South Side, the recently completed 47,000-square-foot building provides medical and dental care as well as a community and recreation center.

While the project elevates the services the center offers, getting it completed came with its share of challenges, officials involved in the project admit.

Groundbreaking took place in spring of 2008 for the $12 million expansion project, geared to meet the needs for medical and dental care, wellness and child and family programs for some 100,000 people.

But six months into the construction the financial crisis took a toll on the project.

“We, like everybody, got stuck in the middle — our portfolio and our assets being decimated by the stock market — so it was a difficult decision for us to figure out how to continue all that,” says Kevin C. Moriarty, president and CEO for Methodist Healthcare Ministries.

The nonprofit, which provides funding for health care services to low-income families and the uninsured in South Texas, negotiated a line of credit with Frost Bank, anticipating that the market would turn around in the near future. It borrowed $50 million to cover this project and other programs it offers in South Texas.

“It paid off,” says Moriarty. “We took a risk in November of 2008. We needed to get it done, the community needed it.” By July 2009, the line of credit was paid off.

The two-story center opened in November. Designed by Kell Muñoz Architects in partnership with Zachry Construction Corp., it features an 8,000-square-foot, climate-controlled gymnasium and recreational and sports fields, 12 medical exam rooms, 20 dental stations, an oral surgery suite and a full service dental laboratory.

“We’re real pleased. We had to worry about how we were going to pay for all the programs,” adds Moriarty. “The need in that community was just so great.”

Carol Schliesinger is a San Antonio-based freelance writer.

Mission Road Ministries

By Sandra Lowe Sanchez

There’s a silver lining in every recession. For Mission Road Development Center, a nonprofit organization serving the developmentally disabled community, the slower economy meant that its planned 14,000-square-foot Oppenheimer Center cost $275,000 less than the $3.6 million originally budgeted. Some of the savings came from more than $225,000 the center had budgeted for cost overruns. The remainder came from actual savings on the project due to lower costs. That meant the center was able to go out and raise additional funds to make other improvements.

“The fact that there were savings in the original phase gave us a great kick-start to go ahead and raise the money for the add-ons,” says Toby Summers, president and CEO of Mission Road Ministries, the umbrella organization for the South Side nonprofit.

The add-ons include an ornamental iron fence around the 21-acre property. “It will be a visual enhancement from Mission Road, but even more importantly it will make the campus much more safe and secure,” Summers says.

Next, Mission Road Development Center is converting a 4,000-square-foot gym that has no air conditioning to an open-air multipurpose pavilion. The building was originally an Army chapel that was moved to the campus in the 1960s. Because the property has some historic significance, including “beautiful wooden trusses,” the center wanted to retain the property, Summers explains. Marmon Mok, the architect on the new building, is the designer on the pavilion.

In addition, a plan has been developed to add outdoor lighting. “Our campus never had much lighting,” Summers says, “so now we have a campus lighting plan.”

The idea for the Oppenheimer Center was born in 2007 when Jesse Oppenheimer — who recently passed away — and his wife, Susan, approached Mission Road Ministries about providing a $1 million challenge grant for the building that would serve adults in one wing, and children in the other, with an upstairs gymnasium.

The additional enhancements put the price tag for the complete project at $4 million. Summers says all but $100,000 of the additional funds have been raised and the project is still set to come in on schedule, substantially complete by Christmas Eve. The add-on projects are expected to be completed by the end of January.

As for the $100,000 remaining, Summers says, “We have an number of outstanding grants. We’re debt free and we intend to stay that way. We do have some reserve we can rely on.”

Among its services, Mission Road Development Center provides residential living for children and adults with development disabilities on its campus. According to its Web site, it is one of only two nonprofit organizations in Texas caring for children with mental retardation who have been removed from their families by Child Protective Services due to abuse or neglect.